NT Gatekeeper: Using PsInfo to Report System Uptime

In Windows NT 4.0, installing a new program or enabling a new system feature often requires a reboot. An easy way to see whether something unusual happened on one of my servers is to determine whether someone recently rebooted the system. Do you know of a command-prompt tool that reports system uptime?

Sysinternals' PsInfo is an interesting freeware tool that you can use to report system uptime. (Figure 3 shows PsInfo output.) You can download this command-prompt tool from http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/psinfo.shtml. PsInfo also reports on other system characteristics, such as kernel version and processor type. If you add the —h switch, the PsInfo command also reports on installed hotfixes. If you add the —s switch, the command adds a report on installed software. You can also use the tool to query remote machines. The following command reports uptime and other system-related information for the machine named fileserver1:

psinfo \fileserver1

If you want to query a remote machine, the account that runs the PsInfo tool must have remote registry access to the remote machine's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEM registry subkey. For more information about configuring remote registry access, see "Securing Remote Access to the System Registry," October 2001, InstantDoc ID 22417.